VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Police arrested a man Friday in connection with a series of oil and gas pipeline bombings in northeastern British Columbia.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Inspector Tim Shields said a man in his 50s or 60s was taken into custody in western Alberta. Police did not release the suspect's name pending the filing of formal charges.

Police were searching a farm in the western Alberta town of Hythe in connection with the case, Shields said.

Sunni leader will appeal election ban

BAGHDAD -- Hopes of persuading Iraq's minority Sunnis to take part in the March election were dealt a blow Friday after a prominent Sunni politician said he'd been barred from the polls because of alleged ties to Saddam Hussein's regime.

Legislator Saleh al-Mutlaq said he planned to appeal the decision by a committee to bar him and warned its ruling would stoke sectarian tensions ahead of the March 7 vote.

In a sign of the shifting nature of Iraqi electoral politics, a spokesman for Iraq's electoral body said Friday evening that the parliamentary committee's decision had not been formally received and that the move to bar al-Mutlaq was not the final ruling on the case.

The decision by many Sunnis to boycott the 2005 polls froze them out of the Shiite-dominated government and drove many into the arms of al-Qaida. It was a key cause of the two years of violence that followed.

1 US, 8 Afghan troops killed by roadside bombs

KABUL -- Roadside bombs have killed eight Afghan soldiers and a U.S. service member in separate incidents in Afghanistan, officials said Friday.

NATO confirmed the American died Thursday in eastern Afghanistan, but provided no other details.

Also Thursday, an Afghan army vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Uruzgan province in central Afghanistan. Army commander Abdul Hamid said eight soldiers who were inside the vehicle were killed as they were returning from the provincial capital of Tarin Kot.

In Logar province, south of Kabul, two local intelligence guards were killed Friday at a dog fight in the provincial capital of Pul-e Alam, said Mustafa Mosseini, chief of police in the province.